


Lyrical Miracle

by Camelittle



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Humor, Kid Fic, London, M/M, Magic, Possession, References to David Bowie, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 11:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2580002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camelittle/pseuds/Camelittle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A grim, dark being awakens in the London Underground. It might even be eldritch. The Lady of the Lake must act quickly to bring her heroes together before it is too late. </p><p>In which Merlin, a soft-hearted idiot with a terrible memory for lyrics, encounters Arthur, an ardent David Bowie fan, at Morgana's Halloween party. Good job Freya's brought an assortment of magical jewellery to help speed things along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

**Author's Note:**

> Enormous thanks to Waanderlust for kicking my butt and giving me fantastic beta advice, to Merlocked18 for the title ideas.  
> Especial thanks to the wonderfully patient Tari_Sue, both for the beta read and for general encouragement. Any errors remaining are all mine.
> 
> Written for the October theme "Magical Creatures" over on Merlin Writers (http://merlin-writers.livejournal.com/149427.html).

Deep in the belly of the earth lurked the beast, stirring and twitching, its sleep haunted by dreams of chaos and destruction, revenge and damnation.

A brief, violent dream made it shudder. Its vast tentacles trembled and flexed as it yawned, exhaling, sending an evil-smelling wind gusting through the tunnels of the Northern Line, making the commuters shiver in the echo of its foulness.

Poor mortals, they had no inkling that their tunnelling and meddling had awakened an ancient and vast malevolence, no idea that the sudden bursts of wind were not caused by incoming trains, but instead were the breaths of a foul, tentacled being, whose limbs stretched the full length of the Northern Line from Morden in the south to High Barnet and Edgware in the north.

Oblivious, the humans scuttled and huddled in its bowels, thinking that the power failures and overcrowding and bad temper that haunted the Northern Line were mere manifestations of entropy, Sod’s Law and blind luck. More fool them.

The creature’s consciousness had been growing, recently, as it struggled to wake fully. Up and down the length of the track, temperatures rose, tempers frayed, lights flickered and dimmed. At Bank Station, grim-faced commuters elbowed and shoved their way to the platform edge, wielding umbrellas and briefcases to clear the path ahead. At Euston, grumbling tourists tripped their fellow travellers with unwieldy suitcases as they negotiated the spiral staircases, with the escalators inexplicably out of order.

A violent jerk of the monster’s heart made dark fire flash, and the locus of its malice spewed forth into the dim light of the Northern Line platform at Camden Town, with a sound halfway between a “plink” and a “chink”.

And so it began.

*

Morgana fumed. The train, when it arrived, had been so full that they could not even begin to dream of squeezing on.

After it had gone, in a rare moment of quiet amid the dense, silent crowd of suffering commuters, she heard a delicate tinkling sound, right on the edge of her hearing, and sensed, rather than saw, her son bending to retrieve something that had skittered onto the platform in the wake of the departing train. Turning, he stooped, an exclamation of joy on his lips, to pick up what looked like a large, glowing, heart-shaped piece of dark glass, some cheap trinket, no doubt, dropped by a careless passenger, now departed.

“Mum!” he said. “Look what I have found! Can I keep it?”

His mother frowned, absently, firstly at the object, and secondly at the LED display. The next train to Charing Cross would be in three minutes, but as this was the Northern Line, that probably meant six minutes, and then she’d be late for her connection. Someone’s elbow was crushing her ribs, and a red-faced woman’s copy of _The Evening Standard_ flapped violently into her face. A burst of static over the tannoy heralded the next announcement. “Move right down the platform please,” commanded a bored-sounding voice.

“Mum! Please! Finders, keepers, losers, sweepers!” Mordred was jumping up and down with excitement, which was quite a feat considering the level of overcrowding on the platform.

A woman standing next to her “tsked” in disapproval, and stepped backwards onto Morgana’s foot, with a careless “sorry”.

She sighed. “All right, Mordred,” she said, crossly, checking her watch. “And it’s losers, weepers, not losers, sweepers.” Their connection would leave Charing Cross in forty minutes, and with it all her hopes for a reconciliation with Cenred. If she was a religious woman, she might have started praying, right now, for a miracle. A more practical part of her cursed the fact that there was no mobile phone signal on the underground.  

A bunch of excitable teenagers in hoodies barged into a quiet figure at her side. “Excuse me,” he said, crossly. “Fuck off, Shorty,” one of the teenagers replied.

Morgana checked the display again. It still read “Morden 3 minutes”. She ground her teeth. She could have sworn three minutes had already passed. Bloody Northern Line minutes. She had a theory that time went more slowly on the Northern Line than overground. That commuters would emerge from a twenty minute journey along its cavernous, cramped burrows, blinking and confused into the sunlight, and find that several hours had passed. The theory, although she did not know it, was not without merit.

What with one thing or another, she could be forgiven for her distraction

*

Mordred stared deep into the jewel, mesmerised by the way that it flickered, as if it was alive. He could hear a distant voice inside his head, a call for freedom. As he gazed at it he failed to realise two important things. Firstly, that the jewel was staring back. And secondly, that the jewel was not the only watcher.

“Set me free,” whispered the jewel. “You can do it, Mordred! I have chosen you. Put me round your neck and you will see.”

But then the train was there, and Mordred’s mum was tugging his hand, and Uncle Cenred had promised him ice cream. He wrapped the jewel carefully in its heavy chain and put it in his pocket.

*

Far above them, at street level, the watcher was beginning to struggle to keep her focus. Her vision began to fade into a swirl of sparks.

Forcing herself to keep watching until the train finally came and removed the woman and her son from the security camera’s sights, Freya eventually dragged herself away with a cry of pain. The searing burn in her chest felt like a sharp stake, driven deep into her lungs. She’d stayed too long; she needed water, and fast.

Abruptly she thrust her head into a basin and inhaled through her gills. London water, too clean, tasted sour and the chlorine made her head hurt, but it was the best she could do at short notice. She had to get back to Hampstead, to dive into her lake and replenish herself, take away the bad taste in her mouth. And then she would get to work.

She’d been waiting for this, ever since she realised what the Victorians had uncovered with their elaborate network of underground tunnels. It had been amazing that it had taken so long for the monster to awake fully. She’d had time to prepare, to connect her scrying bowl to the security cameras at Camden Town Station.

She’d done her research. She knew where the men she needed could be found.

But what she didn’t know was whether they would be ready in time.

Sighing, her lungs only partly soothed by the cool water, she forced herself to surface and look again into the scrying bowl. What she saw there did not comfort her.

 _They are just boys,_ she whispered. _They have not yet grown into their power or realised their great destiny. They have not even met yet! Their love still lies dormant. What can I do?_

The shivering water did not answer. Sighing, she made her own plans.


	2. Starman

It was a few days later when Merlin found himself on the steps of his boss’s Hampstead house, with a sense of trepidation. In the darkening Halloween twilight its facade seemed nearly as intimidating as its owner’s. The doorbell jangled and fell silent.

While he waited, he stooped to pet a small, black cat. She purred, loud as a tank, and threaded through his legs. “Hello!! What’s your name?” he said, with a delighted smile, burying his fingers into the warm, thick fur at her neck, tickling behind her ears. Morgana or Mordred must have decided to get a kitten, and this one was gorgeous, luminous green eyes closing in ecstasy as she butted at his hand. “Are you sure you should be out on Halloween?”

“It’s a cat!” A sarcastic voice broke through his cooing. “Only a soft-hearted idiot would possibly think that it could talk back!”

“It was a rhetorical question,” retorted Merlin, standing with a frown.

Another bloke stood next to him on the steps – a good looking guy, with a jawline to die for, and messy blond hair. He had dressed unseasonably in Bermuda shorts. He looked familiar, but Merlin couldn't quite place him. This vision rolled its eyes at him.

“Hi.” Undeterred by the weirdly dressed, sarcastic git’s demeanour, Merlin held out his hand.

“Arthur,” said the man, gripping it in a firm handshake. He turned and tugged the cord to make the doorbell ring again, shrugging, then returned his gaze to look Merlin up and down. “Arthur Penn. Who are you?”

That made sense. Arthur was Morgana’s brother, newly returned from some high-flyer business trip in Tokyo. She hadn’t given him a great press, which, as he was growing to understand, meant that she held him in high regard. He’d seen pictures, of course, but they didn’t really prepare him for the shock of Arthur’s sheer presence, nor the lazy flip of his eyes that lingered on Merlin’s lips for just a second too long.

To his humiliation, Merlin found himself blushing under Arthur’s scrutiny, and was grateful for the dimness of the tasteful, NW6 street lighting. “I’m Merlin."

"Merlin? Wait, you're Mordred's new nanny?"

"Not so new!" Merlin said. "I've been here three months. And I'm off duty tonight. Anyway... Arthur.” Merlin’s let his eyes drift slily up and down Arthur’s costume. “What have you come as?”

“Can’t you tell?” Arthur struck a pose, thrusting his hips forward to show off the dragon that adorned his satin Bermuda shorts. “Legendary leader. Blond, posh, sexually alluring.”

“You’re Boris Johnson?”

“Fuck off!”

Merlin buried a smirk, and then winced as Arthur’s fist collided heavily with his upper arm. “Ow! That hurt, you prat!”

“The clue’s in my name, you idiot. And the picture on my shorts is another.”

Merlin feigned ignorance. “There’s a legendary leader called Penn the Prat? Who wears his shorts back to front? I never knew that!”

“I’m King Arthur Pendragon, you wanker!” The guy was almost shouting, now. “And you bloody well know it.”

Grinning, Merlin fingered the sleeve of Arthur’s t-shirt, trying, and failing, not to be affected by the warmth of the solid muscle that lay beneath it. “I’m sure King Arthur didn’t wear a David Bowie t-shirt. Or lurid Bermuda shorts.”

“It was the only thing I could find at short notice. Anyway, you’re a fine one to talk. Who are you meant to be? Gandalf?”

“Duh! Did Gandalf wear black? I think not! Obviously I’m Merlin the Enchanter, like the all-powerful wizard I was named for.”

“All-powerful? Do you have any idea how pompous that sounds? Wicked Witch of the West, more like!”

“Are you calling me a girl? Because I’ll have you know that, although there’s nothing wrong with being a girl, I am quite emphatically not one!” Merlin didn’t miss the way that Arthur’s tongue peeped out when his gaze flicked down towards Merlin’s groin. He smirked. “Want a closer look?”

“What?” Arthur pursed his lips. Merlin backed away before he could punch his arm again. “Don’t be ridiculous. Hey, who’s this? A famous Jedi knight… Hmmm. Let me see… Anakin Skywalker?”

This last comment was directed at the small boy who had finally answered the door, and was peeping round it, so that the top of his “Luke Skywalker” outfit was just visible. A small boy that Merlin was completely familiar with; after all, he’d been looking after him for the last three months.

“Don’t be silly, uncle Arthur,” said Mordred. “Mum says you’re a wind-up merchant and I’m not to pay you any tension. Hello Merlin!”

“Attention, Mordred, not tension.” There was a certain familial resemblance in the way that Arthur corrected Mordred’s little slip, like Morgana did about a hundred times a day.

“Hi Master Luke!” said Merlin. Mordred beamed at him for that. “You on door duty?”

“You’re meant to say ‘Trickle treat’,” said Mordred, sliding out through the small gap in the door with a sulky look. “Mum says I’m allowed to use my water pistol on trickle treaters.” He patted his Luke Skywalker outfit. “Wait. I can’t find it. Oh, fudge!”

Merlin took pity on the boy. “Hey, use my magic wand if you like! But don’t lose it, I want it back!”

“ _Let the children use it. Let the children lose it_ …” sang Arthur.

A lightbulb flashed in Merlin’s brain, and he clearly heard Bowie singing the line, in his head.

“ _Let all the children… moogie_?” Merlin replied, with a mischievous smirk.

When, finally, the handsome, sulky clotpoll actually smiled, it was like the sun coming out.

Arthur did punch Merlin’s arm, but gently. “It’s boogie, idiot,” he said, still smiling. “It’s _let all the children boogie,_ not _moogie_. But I’ll let you off. Always good to meet a fellow Bowie fan. Even if he’s apparently both deaf and unable to use internet search engines to check lyrics.”

“I was pulling your leg!” protested Merlin, grinning back.

Mordred was still standing on the step, looking puzzled, door ajar. “Uncle Arthur?”

“It’s a song called _Starman_ , Mordred, I mean Master Luke,” Arthur explained. “By David Bowie. If you ever let us in the house, I’ll play it for you.”

“Looks like your Uncle Arthur’s a massive Bowie fan, in case you hadn’t noticed,” added Merlin, gesturing to Arthur’s t-shirt.

“Whereas your man Merlin’s a massive idiot, in case you hadn’t noticed,” muttered Arthur under his breath.

“I heard that, you big-headed twat,” said Merlin, indignantly.

“Not surprised you’ve got amazing hearing.” Pushing past him, Arthur ascended the steps, the stiffness of his retreating rear end conveying his mock-annoyance. “With ears like those!” he called, over his shoulder, and holding up one hand behind his head for emphasis.

“Well, with a mouth like that I’m surprised you’re allowed out in public!” retorted Merlin, stung.

“Thanks! Well, you’re not the first to say it!” said Arthur, pausing and looked down at him with a sly grin.

“I _meant_ that you’re a rude, entitled, arrogant arsehole,” retorted Merlin, hotly, feeling the slow rise of heat and mortification colour his cheeks when he replayed what he’d just said.

“Oh, I know what you meant!” said Arthur, and a knowing smile crept across his features, laced with devilment and a hint of promise that definitely did not made Merlin gulp and feel a little weak-kneed. With that, Arthur turned and carried on up the steps.

Unable to think of a single thing to say to defend himself, Merlin instead took a moment to appreciate the beauty of that glorious rear end, which was a wonder to behold, even when encased in back-to-front lurid Bermuda shorts.

A gentle nudge at his ankles startled him. “Hey!” he called. “You forgot the kitten!” Bending, he scooped the unprotesting kitten up with both hands. “You don’t want to stay out here, silly!” he admonished, laughing when she batted at his nose with the soft pads of her unclawed paws. “There will be fireworks later. We don’t want you to be scared, now, do we?”

He followed Arthur into Morgana’s house, with a warm, purring furball bundled into his arms. When he set her down on the floor, she trotted off into the study, presumably to a waiting basket, and he distantly registered that she wasn’t wearing a collar.

*

Morgana’s residence was in that part of Hampstead which still referred to itself as a “village”, even though it had been swallowed up by the advancing city years ago.

Arthur was enormously grateful that it wasn’t an actual village. He was all too aware that, in a proper village, the only entertainment consisted of drinking yourself into stupefaction in one of the two pubs, making up ridiculous new sports in which Wellington boots or other farming equipment featured heavily, conducting sordid affairs, and sticking your nose into other people's depressingly mundane business.

Hampstead was not that sort of village. Hampstead was the kind of place where chi-chi cafes, run by cheery gay couples with a penchant for interior decorating, nestled cheek-by-jowl with antiquarian bookshops, achingly hip fairtrade ethnic clothing shops, Bohemian celebrities with complicated private lives, fifteen separate high-end Bengali restaurants, and the sort of farmer’s market where you could buy ten different varieties of artisan Croatian cheese. The place tiptoed along the fine line between “quirky” and “twee” with some panache.

If Morgana was a place, she would be Hampstead Village.

Arthur was excessively fond of Hampstead, but he would never dream of telling Morgana that.

She was impeccably dressed, if a witch can be said to be impeccable, in an elegant cape, terrifying black patent leather boots, and the sort of figure-hugging black dress that screams “more than you can afford”. Her fingernails, long and blood-red, dragged across the outline of Arthur’s David Bowie T-Shirt, and her face contorted into the sort of finely honed sneer that the upper echelons of north-London society produce when faced with someone who looks like they might come from somewhere on the wrong side of the border with Essex.

“You’re not wearing that to the party, dear brother,” she stated flatly, pulling him in, as if to avoid the neighbours seeing the sartorial depths to which Arthur had sunk, and thrusting a bag into his arms. “Here.”

Gazing at her, aghast, Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but he was too slow.

“Objection over-ruled,” she added. “Merlin, I see you’ve met my brother. You have some experience of persuading recalcitrant male relatives of mine to wear appropriate clothing. After Mordred, Arthur will be no challenge. Would you be an angel and make sure he wears this?”

By the time that Merlin opened his mouth to protest, she was bundling him into the office. “Thank you so much, Merlin, darling, I knew I could rely on you.”

“But...” Merlin said, weakly.

“Morga...” Arthur started to say at the same time.

“Can’t stop, dear brother. I’ve got cocktails to make.” She swished into the kitchen, her boots clacking on the hardwood flooring.

The two men sighed and stared at each other with identical expressions of bemused exasperation.

“I see you’re as good at standing up to Morgana as I am,” said Arthur, with a lop-sided grin that lit up his face.

Merlin shrugged. “To quote the great Han Solo, ‘let the wookiee win!’”

“Are you calling my sister a wookiee?”

“Are you contradicting me?”

They both laughed.


	3. Changes

There must have been something about Merlin after all, because, despite his misgivings about caving to his manipulative sister’s demands, ten minutes later, Arthur found himself attempting to pull a belt on over the top of his faux chain-mail.

“Suck everything in, Arthur,” said Merlin, his tongue darting out to the corner of his mouth as he concentrated on pulling the belt round Arthur's waist. He chewed at his bottom lip and fought with the buckle one final time. “Nope, it's no good, it’s too tight!” He took his ridiculous, over-sized wizard hat off and leant back on the desk, dragging frustrated fingers through sweaty black curls.

Arthur had to tamp down a sudden urge to tame that unruly hair, which is why he scowled when he spoke. “It’s too bloody small,” he said. There was no need for Merlin to look so bloody cheerful about everything, and keep doing distracting things with this tongue and teeth and fingers and lips like that, he was just being deliberately annoying. “That bloody harpy has done this on purpose. I can hardly breathe!”

Merlin bent forward to worry at the belt again, so that Arthur had a fine view of the back of his head. A faint blush stained Merlin’s ears pink. His ears, come to think of it, had an earnest cast to them. They were probably soft to the touch. Finding himself wondering for a moment what they tasted like, Arthur forgot what he was going to say next.

“Perhaps I can help,” said a soft voice from behind him.

Arthur nearly jumped out of his skin. There was someone else in the room with them! Turning, surprised, he saw a diminutive figure, wearing a black catsuit, emerge from the shadow of the filing cabinet. A dark mask, complete with whiskers and attached cat ears, hid most of her face.

“Don’t tell me. You’re a ninja - no, wait, you’re an MI5 stealth specialist, hired by Morgana to spy on us and ensure that we don’t violate the terms of the style police,” he said. He hoped she hadn’t been there for long enough to witness the humiliating spectacle of him struggling into the chainmail.   

“No! I’m Freya,” she said, giggling. “I’ve brought another belt, and there’s a sword too, and a scabbard.”

“Thanks,” he said. Morgana must have sent her, in an uncharacteristic display of mercy. “Freya the cat,” he added.

“Bastard,” said Freya, or at least that’s what it sounded like.

Arthur frowned. “Hey! There’s no need to be rude.”

She laughed. “No! I’m a bastet! Not… the word you thought I said. _Bee aye ess tee ee tee_. Bastet. You know, like the mythical Egyptian goddess. No mere pussy cat, though. It’s my ancient duty to protect the king. Which I will do by arming you with your rightful weapon, and by putting the world’s most powerful magician by your side, in fulfilment of your destiny.”

This time the belt fitted perfectly, and although it felt heavy, it was surprisingly comfortable with the sword at his hip. “You’re the only one that can wield this sword, Excalibur. If another should draw it in anger, disaster will ensue. You must work with Merlin the Enchanter, here, to save Albion from the darkness when the leviathan wakes. You are like two sides of the same coin. The one is nothing without the other.”

Arthur sighed, and exchanged a helpless look with an equally puzzled-looking Merlin. He wondered how much Morgana had bribed Freya to do this match-making schtick.

“All right?” she said, eyes gleaming in amusement behind her mask.

“Yes,” said Arthur. It must have taken ages to prepare the script. He decided to play along with it for now, and tease Morgana mercilessly about its transparent artificiality later. “It’s really comfortable. It’s almost as if it was made to measure!” which was no surprise, given that Morgana must have given Freya his size. “Thank you!”

She arched her back, as if in pleasure, then, and brushed behind her ear like a real cat might. He managed not to roll his eyes at her antics. Her acting really was quite good, and the sword was a nice touch.

“Don’t forget, King Arthur,” she said.  

He could swear that he could hear purring, he would have to find out how she did that.

“Don’t forget. When Excalibur has fulfilled its task, you must return it to me via the water.”

Arthur didn’t know what on earth she was going on about, but he nodded anyway.

“I’ve got something for your friend, too. Hold on a sec!”

She rummaged deep into a scruffy-looking purple tie-dyed bag, and emerged, some moments later, triumphantly brandishing some sort of an ancient-looking Celtic brooch. A complex pattern of intertwined knots outlined the outside of the brooch, while inside a dark-coloured cabochon-cut stone flashed gold in the bright artificial office light. Some sort of dark amber, perhaps.

“Here,” she said, shyly stepping forward to where Merlin stood chewing his bottom lip with his teeth again, and pinning the brooch to Merlin’s cloak. “Merlin. This amulet will protect you from harmful magic. When you have finished your task, and your magic has awakened, you must pass it on to one who needs the protection more than you.”

Something dark and grieving in the tone of her voice stilled Arthur before he could make a sarcastic comment about mystic clap-trap.

“Thanks,” said Merlin, softly, gazing at the brooch as if mesmerised. When he looked up, he sounded breathless, as if he had just been running. “Wow. It’s really beautiful. It… feels almost like...”

“Don’t lose it,” she said with a smile. “It really is magic. If you touch it, it will enhance your power. I sense that you have a strong connection to the earth and air, while water is my element, and fire is Arthur’s. If you’re ever in trouble, you can use the magical incantation ‘ _Time may change me but I can’t trace time._ ’”

Arthur did roll his eyes at that, but only a little bit, because he didn’t want to offend the soft-spoken newcomer, who had been very kind, after all, even if she was taking the whole magical-mythical theme a bit too far. Which is why, instead of sneering about New-Age bollocks,  he found himself nodding in acknowledgment and saying _“Hunky Dory”_.

“Awww, thanks, Arthur,” said Merlin, turning the bright-blue beam of his happy gaze onto him. “Didn’t think you’d ever notice!”

“The album, idiot.” Arthur cuffed Merlin gently on the back of the head, to hide the way a blush threatened to paint his own features a deep and shameful red. “From the track, _‘Changes.’_ The quote - incantation, sorry. The incantation, ‘ _Time may change me, but I can’t trace time_ ,” is a line from _‘Changes’_ , which, as any Bowie aficionado worth his salt will tell you, is from the album ‘ _Hunky Dory_ ’.”

“I knew that!” Merlin protested. “I was just testing you!”

With the way that Merlin grinned at him, Arthur couldn’t help feeling he was being strung along in some elaborate prank. By the time he realised that he was smiling helplessly back, Freya had vanished.  

*

Dazed. That was the only word Merlin could dredge up from his memory to describe the way he was feeling at the moment. Ever since Freya had pinned that brooch to him, his senses had been distracted in a way that it was hard to describe. Now, for example, his vision was somehow enhanced, so that even the dim light from the jack-o-lanterns and candles cast a light that reached the darkest recesses of the room, projecting abstract shapes onto his retina that confused and disorientated him.

As if that wasn’t enough, on top of everything were imprinted the auras of the people around him. Merlin had always been able to see people’s auras, but now… now it was as if a key had turned in a lock deep within his psyche, lifting a cloud from his vision, and everyone’s personalities burst forth in a riot of joyful colours that danced when they spoke.  As Mordred darted in and out of the room, he sent a spray of primary colours splashing across Merlin’s field of view. And as for Arthur… well, Arthur appeared so bright and golden that he was almost dazzling.

And when he closed his eyes, the auras were _still there_. They moved behind his eyelids as the people moved. He could even sense them through the walls. It felt extraordinary, as it he was more alive, as if everything around him thrilled and trembled at the touch of his mind, as if he could do anything, absolutely anything. The thought excited and scared him by turns.

Stepping into the kitchen with a shake of his head, Merlin was stunned to find that he could taste every one of the spooky cocktails that Morgana had lined up along the work surface, just by reaching out with his mind.  

Arthur, on the other hand, took one look at the selection on offer and declared he was off out in search of somewhere that sold beer.

“Coming, Merlin?” he said, pausing at the door to let Gwen through with Elena. “Hello ladies!”

“No, Arthur, dear, Merlin’s staying here,” said Morgana, sipping at her lime-green drink through a straw. “He’s a nanny. And gay. He’s practically one of the girls. Here, Merlin, have a pina ghoulada.”

“Well I’m _gay_ , Morgana,” said Arthur, with an air of such bemused exasperation that Merlin couldn’t help barking out a laugh, “I also happen to be an adult, which means I prefer the amount of sugar in my drinks to be outweighed by the alcohol content.”

“I’m not a girl!” protested Merlin, but weakly, because he happened to have a very good view of Arthur’s retreating rear as it exited through the door. This was a fine enough view at the worst of times; when coupled with his enhanced vision, it sent his pulse rocketing and completely robbed him of coherent thought.

Plus he really was very fond of cocktails, cliché or no cliché.

“Oh yeah?” said Morgana, closing the door and kissing her newly arrived guests on the cheek. “So why have you come dressed as a witch, then? Elena, dear, you look fabulous. Ooooh! Baileys! My favourite! Gwen, gorgeous as always. Love your spooky flower arrangement, my darling, thank you so much! You shouldn’t have.”

As Morgana fussed around with the gifts, Merlin’s attention returned to the present in time to process Morgana’s statement, and his mouth fell open, aghast at the injustice of her outrageous dig at his outfit.

“I’m wearing the costume you gave me!” he pointed out, in a voice that he hoped was dripping with sarcasm. “As I recall, you refused to entertain the idea that I could actually, you know, wear any of my own clothes! And anyway, I’m a warlock, obviously. Gwen! Elena! Lovely to see you!”

“Albeit one who can’t seem to get his cloak on the right way round!”

“What?” Merlin frantically patted at the hem of the cloak and then relaxed while Morgana snorted with laughter. “Oh ha ha!”

Mordred, who was lingering in the hall with his water pistol, now returned to its rightful owner, seemed to find this hilarious.

“Oi, Master Luke,” said Merlin, bending to catch the boy and tickle him under his arms, “Artoo isn’t here to save you from the tickle monster, so be careful who you laugh at. I’m a powerful warlock, I’ll have you know. I can magic tickle you with my extraordinarily long warlock arms.”

Squealing with laughter, Mordred wriggled and squirmed out of his grasp, firing a slug of water at Merlin before running down the corridor to the living room.

“Gwens a shoulder and 'Lena’s Dictor Pin!” he shouted, “they’ll protect me!”

“Dick Turpin, Mordred,” said Morgana, “Not Dictor Pin. And it’s soldier, not shoulder.”

“Soldja,” repeated Mordred dutifully, as they entered the living room.

Once they’d all got drinks - more spooky cocktails for the girls and Merlin, lemonade for Mordred – Gwen smiled reassuringly at him.

“Don’t worry, Merlin,” she said, in a sympathetic tone. “There are plenty of skeletons in Morgana’s cupboard.”

“Skellingtons?” Mordred bounced up and down. “Mum have you got skellingtons in the cupboard? Can I see?”

Morgana laughed. “No, sausage, not real ones. It’s a saying, that’s all. It means that Gwen thinks I have secrets, which I obviously do not. Mummy is an open book.”

Gwen snorted. “Open book? Did you know that when she was at university she regularly used to wear her clothes inside out?”

“Once! That happened once!” Morgana glared at her.

“Haha mum,” chimed in Mordred, jumping on a giant bean bag so enthusiastically that it made Merlin wince in expectation that thousands of tiny polystyrene balls would come cascading out, again, and he’d be the one who would have to clear it up, as usual. “You never telled me that! And you’s always moaning about my label showing on my school uniform, and Merlin, have you seed my new Luke Skywalker lego? And I made a Lennium Falcon. And Merlin, have you seed my new jool? It’s buried treasure.”

But Merlin couldn’t reply. He was too focussed on a sudden awareness that a distant, obliging, magical part of him instinctively was working to shore up the fabric of the beanbag and reinforce the stitching in the place where it was just about to spill open. Before he could respond, the doorbell rang and Mordred was running out of the room again. “Ooh, trickle treaters at the door! Can I go, Mum?”

“They’re Trick _or_ Treaters, sausage, not trickle treaters…”

It seemed suddenly quiet, although they could hear gleeful shouts from the hallway, which presumably meant that the hapless callers had been dispatched with either chocolate or a soaking from Mordred’s water pistol, or, knowing Mordred, both.

Tentatively, Merlin reached out with his new-found consciousness and found that he could easily see what was going on in the hallway, as if he was floating above Mordred’s head. He pushed out a little further, past the small, giggling group of costumed revellers and onto the street. He wasn’t particularly surprised when his consciousness, almost without volition, teetered down the street in search of a luminous golden trail and rapidly found Arthur in Waitrose, paying for a crate of London Pride.

This was all decidedly weird. Freya’s gift had definitely done something to him, releasing some hitherto hidden part of what his mum called his “uncanny abilities”. Resolving to talk to his uncle about it next time they met up, Merlin shrugged and took a swig of his drink.

When Morgana spoke, her voice brought his wandering attention back into the room with a start.

“You should be careful, Gwen,” Morgana was saying as she frowned at her friend. It took a moment for Merlin to remember what they had been talking about. Something to do with Morgana’s clothes?

“What do you mean?” Gwen took a sip of her cocktail.

“Well, you know, people who live in glass houses…”

“Still don’t know what you mean!”

“Well, I seem to remember a time when you came running into Elena’s room to see if she had a spare hairband, because you wanted a shower and didn’t want to get your hair wet.”

“No!” said Gwen, lifting her finger in admonishment. “No! Morgana, don’t go there!”

Elena laughed. “Oh, my God, yes! And I showed you how to tie your hair up with a pair of clean knickers”

“What?” Merlin burst out laughing. “How is that even possible?”

“It’s very practical, actually,” replied Elena. “The elastic is really forgiving. But the important thing to do is not to forget you have them in your hair.”

“Ah! I sense a story there!” said Merlin.

Morgana smiled, an innocent expression which Merlin knew was utterly deceiving. He couldn’t help feeling a little bit sorry for Gwen, even though he was enjoying the conversation. Gwen had her head in her hands now and was rocking back and forth, saying “no, no, no, no!”

“Oh yeah, it worked really well, didn’t it Gwen?” said Morgana, with an evil glint in her eye.

“Oh my God. I will get you for this.”

“Yeah,” said Elena. “And then we all totally forgot about it a few weeks later when evidently you ran out of hair bands again and…”

“No surprise there,” said Morgana, coolly. “Your room was a total pigsty!”

“It was not!”

“And then you turned up to a lecture wearing a pair of very fetching white lace pants in your hair!” said Elena, triumphantly. She and Morgana fired off a barrage of gatling-gun-like cackles.

“Her face!” said Morgana.

Elena nodded, tears of mirth threatening to streak her make-up. “Marks and Spencer I recall. Poor Gwen didn’t even get caught out with _Agent Provocateur_! Still, at least they weren’t old, manky ones”

“I hate you! Oh my God oh my God oh my God!”

“And creepy old Cedric noticed and told the whole class!” said Morgana.

“God, he was vile,” said Gwen, shuddering into her Pina Ghoulada.

“So we all pretended it was the latest fashion.” Elena broke into peals of laughter.  

“I swear to God Merlin, if you breathe this to a living soul!” Gwen glared at him.

“I won’t, I promise,” said Merlin, between helpless guffaws. “Wizard’s honour!”


	4. Let's Dance

By the time Arthur returned, with what appeared to be about a ton of beers of all kinds, and what looked like the Three Musketeers in tow, whom he introduced as Lancelot, Leon, and Percy, Merlin was well on his way to the bottom of his third cocktail. Merlin recognised Gwaine, dressed as D'Artagnan, as he trailed in after them, treating Merlin to a flirtatious wink and waving what Merlin identified as a bottle of vodka . 

“‘Ello. Arthur. M’lip’s numb,” he said to Arthur, grabbing him and pulling him into the dining room, where Morgana’s “spooky music” collection was playing. The little cat lay sleeping on the sofa on one side of the “dance” room, and in the universal way that they do at house parties throughout the known universe, everyone else congregated in the kitchen.

Arthur grinned at him. “Matches your numb brain, Merlin,” he said, putting a full bottle to his mouth, and then pulling a face.

When Merlin realised the bottle top was still on, he found this incredibly funny.

“Your face!” he said, going limp with mirth, and clinging on to the most convenient available prop, which happened to be Arthur. “Oh my God!”

“Oh, yeah, go on, I’m sure it’s hilarious, Merlin,” said Arthur, although the fond way that the was smiling at Merlin gave the lie to his words. “Hey, let me get this beer open and then let’s dance.”

“ _Put on your red shoes and bring the booze_!” sang Merlin, swaying into Arthur deliberately because he liked the warm, solid feel of him. “Whoops!” He sagged, so that Arthur had to catch him and pull him up by his arms.

“It’s _dance the blues_ , you moron. _Put on your red shoes and dance the blues_. Not bring the booze!”

“My version’s much better.”

He sighed when Arthur went out of the room to get a bottle opener, and danced there alone, singing along to “Monster Mash” for a moment or two, and listening with a grin to the altercation that was taking place in the corridor outside.

“Uncle Arthur,” a high voice was saying, “C’n I have a piggyback to the fireworks later? Pleeeeease, Uncle Arthur!”

“No, Mordred,” Arthur’s voice sounded firm, but amused. “Absolutely not. You have a lifetime ban on piggybacks. You always strangle me, pull my hair, and kick me. Never again.”

“Awwww, go on, I’ll be everso nice!”

“No!”

“Trickle treat!”

“Aaaargh! You menace, give me that water pistol… You’re my least favourite nephew, you know that?”

“I’m your only nephew, uncle Arthur! But I’ve got two uncles. Uncle Cenred’s my favourite, he gives me ice creams!”

“Brat!”

Shrieks of glee were followed by thundering footsteps and delighted giggles. “Stop tickling me, Uncle Arthur!”

“No more water pistol! Promise?”

“I promise!”

“Pinky promise?”

“All right then!”

When Arthur came back, he had wet hair. “My nephew,” he growled, the faint colour that blossomed on his cheeks and the fond expression on his face giving the lie to his words, “is a menace.”

“A phantom menace!” Merlin went off into gales of laughter at his own admittedly brilliant joke. “ _Phantom Menace_! Geddit? From Star Wars!”

“Oh, I get it all right, _Mer_ lin,” purred Arthur. “Just like I get that Morgana has been feeding you her evil cocktails. Either that or you are a complete lightweight.”

Pouting, Merlin wondered if Arthur knew how sexy his voice was when he was being all sarcastic like that, or how endearing it was that he hid his affection for his nephew behind a façade of mock-ferociousness.

“M’not drunk,” Merlin said, sucking up the last of his cocktail through his straw, and watching Arthur through his lashes, noticing the way that Arthur’s gaze flicked down towards his mouth. “I’ve finished this drink though. Gimme a swig of your beer.” The alcohol had made him feel reckless and giddy. Or it could be his attraction to Arthur that was doing it. “Or a kiss. I’d settle for a kiss.”

“You’re certainly not getting any of my beer, after I spent hours cruising the mean streets of Hampstead for it,” said Arthur, stepping right into Merlin’s personal space with a twitch of his lips that Merlin found most encouraging. “Anyway, I thought we were about to dance?”

“Mmmm!” said Merlin, pulling Arthur towards him. “Let’s sway. I’ll fall _into your arms purple like a flower_ if you like.”

“It’s tremble, Merlin,” murmured Arthur into his ear, so warm and so close, hot breath gusting into Merlin’s hair like a promise. “According to Bowie, _You should fall into my arms and tremble like a flower_. It’s not hard.”

“I beg to differ,” said Merlin, chuckling and swaying to the beat, of ‘Monster Mash’ of all things, and it must be the cocktails, cocktails and laughter, and the weird impact of the jewel on his senses, that make his knees feel so weak and his courage so strong. “It’s hard now, and getting harder by the second.”

“Cheeky. Forward.” Arthur wrapped his burly arms around Merlin and nibbled at the tender flesh at the base of his neck, making him shiver and gasp in just the way that the great prophet Bowie had predicted in his song. “Distracting ears. Insolent mouth. Just my type.”

“You have a type?”

“I do.” Soft lips mouthed at his neck. “I have a type and you’re it. How about you?”

“Fuck, yeah,” said Merlin, wanting to tell Arthur that he had a type, that his type was strong, arrogant, sarcastic, posh and masterful, but his type was too busy painting highly pleasurable swirls on his earlobe for him to be able to come out with anything more than a strangled affirmative.

And so of course that’s when it all went to pot.

The door burst open. “Uncle Arthur!” yelled Mordred, diminutive and determined in the wan, orange light from the jack-o-lanterns. “Merlin! Look at my new jool! Look! It’s the same colour as my light saber!”

Several things happened in quick succession.

Merlin and Arthur sprang apart.

With a single movement, Mordred pulled the amulet on, over his head, so that it came to rest just above his breastbone, where it started to glow. It was not that bright a light, really, but amplified by Merlin’s enhanced senses and by the cocktails, it burned green and painful on Merlin’s retina, making him wince against the glare and close his eyes. From behind his closed eyelids he felt a strange probing sensation, as if his secrets were being turned over by some hidden eye, and he shivered, turning away.

At that moment he heard a distant, triumphant sound, somewhere between a “Ching” and a “Ting”.

And the lights went out all over North London.

*

Unnoticed, in a corner of the room, a small black cat  sat licking her paws and worrying about the general cloud of intoxication that hovered about her heroes.

With a flick of her tail and a flash of her eyes, Freya, for it was indeed she, waved a paw at the room, and in response to her command sobriety descended like a pall.

She waited and watched for a moment, her wise cat’s eyes large in the sudden inky blackness.

Satisfied by what only she could see, through the encroaching pandemonium, she vanished.  

She had done her part. She needed to head back to her ponds to breathe, and had to hope that she had done enough for her heroes to work out their part in the battle that was to come.

*

Deep within the earth, the underground system groaned to a halt. In control rooms all along the route of London’s Northern Line, puzzled engineers donned their hard hats and head torches and prepared to descend into the beast’s lair. At Archway, would-be vampires, werewolves and zombies, dressed up for a night of action, found themselves stranded and having to struggle up Europe’s longest escalator in the dark. At Leicester Square, puzzled tourists wondered if this was a curious British Halloween tradition.

The creature stirred, and stretched. At Mornington Crescent, a crack in the wall appeared with an ominous groan. Anyone watching would have gaped, open mouthed, in horror as a glowing, but impossibly black liquid oozed through the crack and spread in great, slithery tendrils across the walls and floors of the tunnels, even, and this was the really horrifying thing, upwards. And if anyone had been there to listen – thankfully for them, they weren’t – they would have heard a faint sound of mocking laughter.

Boffins at the British Geological Survey, far away in Edinburgh, stared at their seismographs, and wondered about the sudden spate of seismic activity centred around certain parts of North London.

*

Meanwhile, back in Hampstead, Merlin and Arthur were quite unaware of the gathering storm that rumbled on under their feet.

“At last,” said Mordred, in a leaden voice, as he clutched at the pendant that dangled heavily on his skinny breastbone. “My slumber can end and I can be restored to my rightful place. The dominions of man shall cease and all shall fall at my feet.” Mordred’s odd little speech was punctuated with a dry cough.

“Oooh!” said Merlin, trying to ignore the way that the glow from Mordred’s jewel  made his skin crawl. “Ghost stories! I love ghost stories! And your jewel is brilliant Mordred! How does it glow like that?” It was strange, now, that Mordred’s aura, once so bright with happy reds and blues, was dull and dark green, as if shaded. Odd little flecks of blue and red occasionally flashed through, as if Mordred’s soul was battling to be let out. Without knowing why, Merlin shivered.

“Yours is glowing too,” said Arthur. “How do you make it do that? Where are the batteries?”

Looking down, Merlin saw that he was right. A warm, golden light radiated from the brooch pinned to his borrowed robe. When Merlin reached up to touch the brooch with his finger, he could only watch in wonder as it seemed almost to push away at the cold, green gleam on Mordred’s chest, which grew fainter even as Merlin’s amulet blazed more brightly.

A warm, tingly feeling surged within him, a great upwelling of joy and love that converged upon the finger touching the amulet and then swept out round the room, as if searching for something, lingering upon Arthur like a caress, before settling warily around the nimbus that emanated from Mordred’s jewel.

It felt like… it felt…

“Magic,” whispered Merlin, puzzled. “It feels like magic!” And, God, it had felt odd before, but something inside him had dissolved away, and whatever was locked behind it had started to leak out.

But Mordred replied with another dry, rasping cough.

“Mordred, are you coming down with something?” Arthur glared accusingly at Merlin, as if it was all somehow his fault.

When Merlin released his finger from the jewel it dimmed, and the pulse of excitement that had thrilled through him quietened to a strange sort of background tension.

Arthur strode off into the kitchen in search of a torch and some cough linctus, with Merlin and Mordred trailing in his wake, and, what with all the excitement of finding Morgana already there, lighting candles in preparation for spooky storytelling, and exchanging exclamations about the powercut with Gwen, the strange moment was forgotten.

At least until Morgana, seeing the way that Merlin’s brooch glinted in the flickering candlelight from a nearby jack-o-lantern, asked him where he had got it from.

“Freya gave it to me,” he said, surprised, “When she gave Arthur his sword. I thought you knew!” He looked around the room for support from Freya, but couldn’t see her anywhere. “I haven’t seen her for a while, though. Has she already gone home?”

Morgana frowned. “How could I have known? And who’s Freya, anyway?”

“She was in the office. With the cat?”

“Cat? What cat?”

“And then she gave Arthur his sword?”

“What sword?”

Merlin and Arthur exchanged a loaded look, and Merlin felt suddenly very sober.

There was definitely something very odd going on.

*

The lights still hadn’t come back on by ten o’clock, when it was time to leave for the fireworks display. It was only when they left the house that they realised that not only was the power out all along their street, but much of north London appeared to be in the dark. The gathering mist didn’t help either, but people with torches peppered the gloom with tiny, jolly little pinpricks of light that bobbed and weaved up the street, converging on Hampstead Heath for the anticipated fireworks display.  

“It’s really spooky,” said Leon. “Things could easily go bump in this sort of night. Good thing us fellas are here to protect the ladies.”

“I wouldn’t worry. Those sounds are mostly caused by Gwaine’s digestive system,” said Lance. “He had a lot of beer and curry last night, and you know what they say…?”

“All for one, and one for all?” said Percy, evidently trying to stay in character.

“Nah!” said Gwaine. “He who smelt it dealt it. Which, in this case, is Lance.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” snorted Morgana. “The only thing we need protection from is your fishy sense of humour.”

The four musketeers burst simultaneously into gleeful laughter.

“A propensity towards making peurile comments about flatulence is the sign of a decadent society,” said Mordred, primly, and then he coughed again.

Morgana fussed around him, pulling at his scarf, while everyone else laughed, but Merlin frowned.

Half an hour ago, Mordred couldn’t even pronounce “Trick or Treat”. Where on earth had he learned words like “flatulence” and “decadent”?

Mind you, with a godfather like Gwaine, he should probably not be too surprised by anything that came out of Mordred’s mouth.

There was something, though, something about Mordred this evening. He’d started the evening his usual ebullient self, but for a little while now, he’d been acting strangely. Merlin fingered the brooch, as if seeking answers, and the golden strands of magic whirled and thrilled through him. He was on the edge of an answer, he knew it, but he could not quite put his finger on it just yet.

*

The faint outlines of bramble-choked hawthorns bunched over the decaying bracken, like elderly folk jealously guarding their scrabble tiles. Writhing mists clung to the branches, deepening gradually as they walked, grabbing at them with ghostly tendrils that flashed vivid white in the pale light from their torches.

Sucking in a mouthful of dank, dark air that tasted of decaying vegetation, Merlin shivered and pulled his wizard’s cloak around him.

“It’s getting thick,” said Gwen.

“A bit like Merlin,” said Arthur, sidling up to Merlin and putting a warm, protective arm around him. “No wonder you’re shivering! Wearing that ridiculous thin wizard’s cloak instead of a sensible coat, like normal people.”

“Oi!” replied Merlin, indignant, “says the man who turned up to a party in late October wearing

Bermuda shorts! Dunno who you think you’re calling thick!”

But Arthur didn’t drop his arm, and if Merlin shuffled a bit closer to revel in his manly warmth, no-one commented on it.

*

What with one thing and another Merlin and Arthur found themselves hanging back behind the others, as if on purpose. And when they finally reached the West Heath, all they could see were pale shadows of denuded thorn bushes, clawing at the fog like wizened old skeletons. Every so often Arthur would feel their fingers brush gently. The others must be up ahead somewhere, but he reckoned the thought police (i.e. Morgana) were far ahead to make sarcastic comments unlikely, so the next time he felt the Merlin’s cold knuckles butt the back of his hand he took a chance and grabbed it, holding on to it, and breathing a sigh of relief when Merlin clung back.

By mutual silent agreement they stopped and turned to face one another.

“Thought you’d never get the hint,” said Merlin, dark eyes twinkling.

Arthur huffed. “You could have said something, broccoli brain.”

“I’ve always thought brains look more like cauliflower than broccoli.”

“Well, yours certainly does.”

“Can’t you say something nice?” said Merlin. “I’m about to kiss you, after all.”

“I can do nice. I’m a very nice person, I’ll have you know.”

“Go on then.”

Arthur thought for a bit, racking his brain for analogies, for sweet, juicy things that would do the plump rosiness of Merlin’s tempting lips justice, and while he was thinking, he reached round to grab Merlin’s other hand.

The most delicious memory of his childhood, before his mother passed away, was of a sunny day picking strawberries at the sort of farm where you had to harvest your own fruit. The strawberries were low to the ground, and nestled between the deep green leaves like huge rubies, a decadent shade of scarlet, coming away from the plant with just a firm tug. They filled his mouth with little firm, ecstatic bursts of heaven. He’d never tasted anything that could compare, in all the days since, to the exquisite sensation of sweet strawberry juice, still warm from the sun, running in great sticky rivers down his chin so that he had to seek every last trace with his eager tongue.

“You’re a bit like a strawberry,” he croaked at last.

“Red, and with white pimples, you mean?” joked Merlin.

Arthur rolled his eyes. “I take it all back. You’re far too obtuse to be a strawberry.”

“Ah, some other, more stupid kind of fruit perhaps. Pineapple?”

“Shut up, Merlin.” Arthur leaned forward to silence that tantalising, insolent mouth with his own, and the moment when their lips finally met was every bit as good as that day on the strawberry farm. Maybe even better. He closed his eyes and parted his lips, granting Merlin entry to his mouth. Mmm. Definitely better.

Judging by the rumbling moan that he felt building deep in Merlin’s chest, even through all the layers of clothing, Merlin agreed.

“Arthur? Merlin?” Morgana’s voice was very close by. “Put my nanny down, little brother. It’s nearly time for the fireworks. And be careful you don’t drop him. Brothers are two a penny, but a good nanny is hard to find.”

“How did she know we were kissing?” hissed Merlin.

“Witchcraft,” whispered Arthur, knowingly. “I suppose we had better join the rest of them, or we’ll never hear the last of it,” he added in a sulky undertone, not wanting to pull away. “Not that we’ll be able to see a bloody thing in this weather, anyway.”

“It’s all right, Arthur,” said Merlin. The predatory gleam in his eye made Arthur’s heart pound. “We can get back to this later on, when the witches have gone to their beds.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” growled Arthur, putting a protective hand on Merlin’s back.

 

 


	5. Ashes to Ashes

A distant boom heralded the start of the fireworks, and they could just see, through the fog, a faint sparkle of the rocket’s path before it dispersed into clouds of cordite and steam.

“I love the smell of cordite,” said Gwen, “it reminds me of Elyan. But then I start worrying about him.”

“Elyan?” there was a hint of disappointment in Lance’s voice, which made Merlin smile.

“Gwen’s brother,” said Arthur, with an amused tilt of his lips. “Elyan is Gwen’s brother, and he is high up in the army. He’s gone on a tour somewhere and he’s not allowed to talk about it. Gwen is understandably concerned.”

“Ah!” said Lance, and it’s amazing how much mingled relief and concern he managed to squeeze into such a short syllable. “I completely understand, Gwen. It’s enormously worrying for you.” The note of sympathy in his voice couldn’t disguise an undertone of warm regard.

“The air reeks of heteronormativity. It’s positively nauseating,” muttered Arthur to Merlin out of the side of his mouth.

Hastily disguising his bark of laughter as a cough, Merlin scanned the sky for anything vaguely resembling a firework.

“There!” he said, as a bloom of sparks blossomed briefly overhead before dispersing, sucked up by the gloom.

“ _Strung out in heaven’s high_ ,” said Arthur, adopting his “David Bowie” voice.

“ _Living a long time ago_ ,” Merlin agreed.

Arthur cuffed him on the back of the head. “It’s _hitting an all time low_ , sprout brain.”

“Ow! Sprout brain?”

“I’m running out of brassicas to describe your wits with.”

“And I’m running out of patience with your mouth! If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything!”

“Oh? And what do you suggest I do with my mouth, _Mer_ lin? Declaim poetry?”

“Well, now that you come to ask, there is one thing…”

“Merlin! Arthur! Before you go any further I’d like to remind you that there is a seven-year old present!” said Morgana, sharply.

“In that case, maybe Merlin would like to…” Arthur was just beginning to draw in a breath to ask Merlin if he’d like to come and investigate some of the other things that the West Heath is famous for at night, when he realised that he hadn’t actually seen Mordred for a while. “Hang on a minute. Where is Mordred?”

“Mordred? Don’t be silly, he’s with you,” said Morgana. Her voice had taken on the sharp edge that he remembered from their childhood, when she was reprimanding him for some prank or another. “Stop it Arthur, it’s not funny.”

Arthur stared at her for a moment. “What? No! I’m not joking – he left with you!” he said, with a sudden painful stab of worry. “I haven’t seen him since we left the house!”

“What? No!” echoed Morgana. “He definitely said he was coming with you,” she added, her voice starting to rise, an edge of panic to it. “You were there! I told him he had to hold your hand. Don’t you remember?”

Arthur shook his head, puzzled. “No! You absolutely did not say that to me!”

“Don’t lie to me!” yelled Morgana. “He was with you! Why would you lie about it?”

“I’m not lying!” Arthur yelled back, stunned into fury. “How could you think that?” He stepped forward so that their faces were almost touching, and raised his index finger for emphasis. “I would never lie to you Morgana! Especially not about something so important.”

“Liar!” she screamed, beating at his chest with her fists. “You’re lying! Where is he?”

Arthur caught her fists and held on to them. “Stop it! I never lie! How could you say that!”

“Wait!” Merlin inserted himself between them, surprisingly strong as he prised them apart. “Wait, Morgana. There must be some misunderstanding. I was with Arthur and he definitely did not say that. There’s something odd going on tonight. We can try to work out what happened, later, but the most important thing now is to find Mordred.”

“How can you stand up for him?” screeched Morgana, a look of absolute betrayal and anguish on her face. “You’re just as bad, you should have been taking care of Mordred…” Morgana looked like she was going to slap Merlin, and Arthur tensed as if to defend him, but Leon held her arm.

“He’s right, Morg,” said Leon, gently. “Let’s focus on finding Mordred. What would he do when he realised he was lost? Did you discuss a safety plan with him?”

She looked as if she was going to turn on Leon for a moment, but then something seemed to break, and she sagged, her lip trembling, and her eyes filling with unshed tears. “He’s meant to go home,” she said, looking suddenly lost and frightened. “If we ever get separated, he’s to go home and wait for me there.”

Leon put an arm around her as if to reassure her. “Then that’s where we’ll go,” he said in a calm, no-nonsense voice..

“But what if he’s lost on the Heath?” her voice wavered and cracked, and her breath came in great gasps and sobs. “And it’s all _their fault_.” Her finger jabbed the air viciously in Arthur’s general direction.

Arthur inhaled a mouthful of damp October fog and felt his rage dissipate. Feeling awful, all of a sudden, for losing his temper, he reached out tentatively to pat her back.

“Hey! Let’s not go poking pointy fingers, shall we?” chided Leon, gently, all kind concern. “Let’s just find Mordred and then everything will be fine.”

She sighed. “All right,” she said.

Arthur was beginning to think that it was Leon, not Merlin, who should be graced with the title of wizard, for his magical Morgana-calming powers. “Look,” he said, clearing his throat, “It’s all right, I’ll look for him. Out on the Heath. Call me if he comes home, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I find anything.”

“Don’t worry,” added Merlin, his voice deep and reassuring. “If he’s out here, we’ll find him. I’m certain of it.”

Although he hadn’t asked, or assumed, anything, a small part of Arthur unfurled in relief of Merlin’s implicit confirmation that they would undertake this search together.

*

“We’ll find him, Arthur,” said Merlin firmly, jogging along by his side, scanning the bushes to the right and left. Raising his voice he added, “Mordred? Master Luke? Stop mucking about, now! You’ll miss the fireworks!”

And although, deep down, Arthur knew that Merlin was just a bloke, a nanny, with a penchant for sweet cocktails and a total inability to remember any of the correct lyrics to David Bowie’s seminal works, a soft-hearted cat-hugging, idiot who was wearing a somewhat ridiculous wizard’s costume, nevertheless there was something in Merlin’s voice, a total confidence in their combined capabilities, however misplaced, that reassured Arthur, and convinced him that the pair of them, together, could accomplish this, could achieve anything.

Unable to convey his trust with mere words, he nudged Merlin with his shoulder as they ran, instead.

*

An extraordinary noise rent the air, a cross between a caterwaul and human anguish.

“What the fuck was that?” gasped Arthur.

“I don’t know!” said Merlin, looking wildly around. “Bloody hell, Arthur! Look!”

Following his pointing finger, Arthur saw what looked like the outline of a giant black cat, snarling at them, maw agape as it made that terrible screeching sound again. As they watched, it raised a paw, as if beckoning, and then vanished into the mist.

“Weird!” said Arthur, frowning. “Weird things are happening tonight, Merlin.”

“Not just weird. Downright eerie. Eldritch, even,” said Merlin. “I’ve got a funny feeling about this.”

“You and me both.”

“Seriously though. That cat… I think that was Freya.”

“What? The woman in the cat suit? Don’t be stupid, that was an actual cat, over there!”

“Remember Freya told us she was a bastet? What if it was true? What if it was all true, Arthur? Maybe she’s a magical cat creature!”

Arthur would normally scoff at such nonsense, but he’d seen it, seen the cat, with his own eyes, and knew he wasn’t bonkers. “I suppose you might be on to something,” he said, “although it pains me to admit it.”

“She was trying to tell us something.” Merlin added. “And the brooch - the brooch she gave me - it’s glowing again, look!”

When Arthur looked closely, it wasn’t just the amulet that was glowing. Merlin was giving off a faint yellow aura and his eyes – his eyes were like liquid gold for a moment.

“What?” said Merlin. “Why are you looking at me like that. Arthur? Arthur, your sword! It’s… Arthur, you’re glowing too! You’ve got something on your head. It looks like… some sort of a golden hat. Or maybe… maybe... ”

“Maybe what?”

“A crown…?” Merlin whispered, swallowing.

Arthur wasn't one for being taken in by superstitious rubbish, but there must be some kind of an electrical discharge in the air, something to do with the weird weather, and he could not deny that things were getting stranger by the second.

“Well, I suppose we’d better follow her, maybe she knows where Mordred is,” he said, frowning. Pulling the sword Freya had given him from its scabbard, he let out a sudden exclamation. “It _is_ glowing! I wonder where the batteries are? And it’s got words on it,” he said. “Take me up, it says.”

“What does it mean?”

“I’d have thought that was obvious, even to a cauliflower-brain like you, Merlin,” said Arthur, hefting the weapon with a feeling of wonder. “Well, it certainly feels business-like enough. Come on then! Let’s go!”

Arthur’s heart clenched when he thought about his little nephew, potentially out alone on the Heath in the fog.

But  the grin Merlin gave him as they continued walking seemed curiously familiar, and everything felt somehow _right_ , as if Arthur had woken from a dream to find his true companion by his side, where he belonged, and together they were marching to their destiny.

*

Deep beneath the Heath, the ancient menace stirred, drawn to the treasure clasped around Mordred’s neck.

An ink-black cloud, aware and malevolent, and linked to the jewel as if by a slender dark thread of utter blackness, clawed out of the tunnels, shuffling along the byways of the Heath, slithering and slinking around roots and shoots and clomping boots. Steadily it whirled through the dense fog and the forest of waiting legs, attached in pairs to the oblivious firework-watchers.

Whispering silently it converged on a small figure in Darth Vader wellingtons, who stood, rigid, eyes closed. Faster and faster it streamed, shooting into his open mouth and ears and nose until it possessed him utterly, and the once-glowing heart-shaped orb that lay upon his chest, hidden behind his winter coat and scarf, winked out, becoming completely opaque and as black as onyx.

When his eyes finally sprang open they shone with a fierce, dark green light, and his dry chuckle sounded ancient like crinkling parchment.

Slowly he turned and slipped, unnoticed, through the crowd, drawn to the top of Parliament Hill where, when he drew his hand through the fog to part it for a moment, the whole City was laid out before him like a feast ready for him to take. He opened his mouth and spoke.

“At last! It is all mine! Stone creatures, Earth’s bones, come to me, for our time is upon us.”

The pitch of his voice rose to a high treble as across the city the statues and monuments and gargoyles stirred, with a great scraping and groaning.

“Awake, oh sons and daughters of rock, and come to me! Take back your heritage!” he screamed.

And so they did, descending from plinths and parapets, from churches and courtrooms, from townhalls and turrets. In Trafalgar Square, Lord Nelson shimmied, one-armed, down from his perch and stood astride a great, stone lion. Pedestrians and pigeons scattered, screaming when the giant blue cockerel leapt to the fountain with a great splash, and started to preen.

They shuffled, singly at first, and then combining in their tens and twenties, heading north at some unspoken command, paying no heed to traffic nor terrified citizens nor stumbling drunks, stalking through the ineffectual cordons of police officers and their hastily scrambled vehicles.

From his vantage point the being who now inhabited Mordred’s body stood, power streaming from his fingertips in long, green tendrils, away into the city. And in reply they came, through the dense layers of swirling fog and the urban jungle, propelled by the vast malevolence that drove him.

Mordred’s face broke into a serene smile. “Not long now, my pretties,” he purred. He let out a dry cough, sloughing off the sleep of ages. There was one whom he must defeat. The lady of the Lake who had been protecting the land for centuries. He sensed her attention upon him as she scried. Lifting his head, he yelled into the ether.

“I am coming for you,” he shouted, turning his back on the city and reaching towards the ponds, fingers clawed, until green streaks of power shot out from his hand.

*

With a gasp, Freya lifted her head away from the still waters of the Ladies Bathing Pond.

“Sigan,” she whispered, shivering and faint with weariness, her energy all but spent. “Cornelius Sigan has returned.”

He was coming. Sensing his advance, she prayed that her heroes would reach her first, and gathered herself to cast one final, desperate sending, out into the fog. Casting about herself for an awareness, for the brooch that she gave Merlin, she began to panic, for its aura was invisible to her.

“Merlin!” She shouted, desperate. “Merlin!” It was as if he had disappeared altogether.

She was just about to slink, weeping, into her pond, when she realised, and hope finally blossomed in her heart. For Merlin’s aura had not disappeared, not at all! No! Quite the reverse. For one moment she allowed herself a brief snort of laughter, a burst of self-deprecation. How stupid of her! She should have known she could trust Merlin, when had he ever let her down?

Merlin’s awareness had not shrunk to nothing: quite the opposite, in fact. It had expanded, until it arched above her head and beneath her feet, until its warmth and wonder suffused the air all around her, and filled the heath with a faint golden whisper of joy and reassurance that lent her a new strength.

Renewed, she somehow mustered up enough energy to send out the cat one more time before sinking, exhausted, into her pool.

But, even as she fell into a deep slumber, still the gargoyles crunched and slithered along the damp pavements, with an unearthly scraping and scrunching like the sound of a million nails on a thousand blackboards.

The diminutive figure of Cornelius Sigan stood atop a fallen log, arms outstretched, an air of triumph settling upon his shoulders like a mantle, his outline highlighted by a faint, green nimbus that pushed and shimmered through the fog.

There they were, her heroes. He could see them now. Earth, wind and fire, gathered together for him to command.

Slowly, his face broke into a broad grin. “Come to me,” he whispered, his voice as strong as steel and as thin as lace. “Come to me, Merlin. Come, Arthur. With your power joined to mine, I will be truly invincible.”

*

The apparition appeared again a couple of times as a sort of absence of mist, with the curling swathes of vapour roiling and boiling around its edges to define the outline of a large cat, not at all like the small, black domesticated animal they’d seen earlier at Morgana’s.

But still there was no sign of Mordred. Frustrated, Arthur stopped.

Merlin, hard on his heels, nearly stumbled over him. “Why have you stopped?”

“I think we should go back.” Arthur was beginning to doubt their original decision to follow the cat. If Mordred really was still out here on the Heath, why assume she was leading them towards him? “If you think that it’s really Freya, which is quite frankly ridiculous, or anything to do with her, some sort of a hologram or something, or even a mystic cat, which I doubt, then maybe she is just taking us to the place where magical swirly-mist cats go so we can open a swirly-mist cat food container for her.” He swished his sword around a few times, for no other reason than that it felt good to be doing something, anything. “I think we should go back.” He felt eyes boring into him and turned. “What?”

“Are you going to tell me you don’t believe there’s something odd going on? Something… spooky?”

Arthur frowned. He’d been brought up to be sceptical about all things supernatural, but even he had to admit that some of the things he’d seen, heard, felt this evening didn’t really make sense.

“All right,” he conceded. “There’s some odd stuff going on. But maybe it’s all just harmless Halloween pranks and static electricity? And meanwhile my nephew is still missing. Maybe we’re just getting farther and farther away from him.”

There was a brief silence before Merlin replied, during which an owl hooted, far away, unmistakable above the hum of the city, making Arthur shiver. “I have a bad feeling about Mordred going missing,” Merlin said at last, his speech hesitant as if he was holding something back.

Arthur looked, really looked at Merlin for a moment, gazing intently into his face. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but all he saw was a riot of hair and cheekbones defining a concerned-looking expression. For a second he thought he could see a strange golden glow about him, but when he blinked it was gone, and he put it down to a retinal artifact from their torches.

“Well, that puts you in a unique group. Duh!” Arthur said, not even trying not to sound sarcastic.

Merlin’s expressive mouth thinned out into a flat line, as if in annoyance, before he spoke.

“Fine,” said Merlin, nodding, his face taking on an air of determined defiance. “Fine. Right. Well. You don’t have to believe this, but I… I am sensitive to these things. You could call it magic, second sight, or sixth sense, whatever you like, but I am. And take it from me, there has been something very strange about Mordred this evening, and about the Heath in general, and about this cat in particular. And I… you…” Merlin paused for a second, his finger poised even as it pointed at Arthur’s chest, “I know it’s hard to understand, so, I don’t expect you to believe me, but I know this cat is on our side, I can sense Mordred’s aura, even though it’s hidden. And so I am going to use my sixth sense, whatever you call it, to see if I can find out more, and you might scoff about it, but I think I can feel him, so I’m going to do it anyway.”

Arthur opened his mouth to respond to this long, incoherent and rather rambling speech with a terse comment about not wasting time on stupid superstitions while his nephew was missing, when the world changed for him.

Because that’s when Merlin’s eyes flashed golden, and he thrust his arms out wide.

A warm breeze fluttered past, making the fallen leaves on the floor whisper as if surprised, and making all the hairs on Arthur’s neck stand out out on end. When he thought about it later, he’d wonder why he didn’t feel afraid, only curious and intrigued, and guessed that, in the end, it was because he couldn’t ever imagine feeling afraid of Merlin, whose kindly air and infectious smile surely hid nothing more sinister than an enormous benevolence.

When Merlin lowered his hands, the glow faded. Without speaking, he strode off with a purposeful air.

Arthur raced to catch up. “Wait! Merlin! Wait! What did you just – what possessed you back there? Merlin? Did you find him? Is he okay?”

Merlin beckoned and started to jog. “There’s no time to lose,” he shouted over his shoulder. “He’s on Parliament Hill. But there’s something weird happening. Quick, Arthur! I hope we can stop it if we’re there in time!”

“But what…?”

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what’s happened to him, it’s like he’s… wait a minute, what did you say?”

“I asked if you found him.”

“No! Before that. You asked me… you asked me what...” Merlin stopped dead and gripped Arthur’s forearms hard. “Brilliant!” his grin looked almost manic for a second, “what possessed me! You’re brilliant, Arthur, that’s it!” Then his face fell. “But awful.”

“What? For God’s sake, Merlin, you cabbagehead! Will you bloody explain what the hell’s going on?”

Merlin whirled about, jogging backwards for a moment. “Possession, Arthur,” he said, in a worried-sounding voice. “I think that’s it. Mordred’s been possessed. That’s why his aura is so muted. And it’s fading, all the time. Whatever it is that possessed him… it’s getting stronger. We have to stop him, Arthur! That must be what the cat was trying to tell us! Come on!.”

Arthur stared, dumbstruck, at Merlin’s determined-looking back as it disappeared into a dense bank of fog. Then, shrugging, he set his feet on the same path, with his sword drawn.


	6. The Man Who Sold The World

When finally they stumbled across Mordred’s triumphant figure, Arthur felt a cold anger creep into his very bones, and a sudden desire to maim horribly whoever was responsible.

His little nephew, who only two hours previously had been unable to pronounce the word “soldier”, stood high on a fallen tree-stump, incanting, hands outstretched, in some harsh language. A web of dark green fire stretched from his fingers across the city. There was a painful wrongness to it; the light was dim, but it hurt Arthur’s eyes, and set him blinking and reeling, as if assaulted by a powerful evil.

His heart nearly stopped when, instead of taking stock, Merlin bumbled through the fog until he stood face to face with Mordred, and yelled at him to stop, so that the _thing_ that had possessed him turned and focused all the fire from his fingers upon Merlin himself, making him scream out and arch his back in agony.

“Finally, Merlin, we meet again,” said the boy who was not Mordred any longer.

“Who… are… you…” Merlin managed to stutter, his hand scrabbling at his own throat.

“I am Cornelius Sigan. Your obliging youngling friend, here, has awoken me and given me shelter.” When the monster laughed, the brittle edge to it sounded like a thousand years of pent-up bitterness and rage. “The fool,” he added, low and spiteful. “This city has endless possibilities for one such as me.”

Merlin was still struggling to speak. “Leave… aaargh! Leave… Mordred… alone!” A collar of dark fire wrapped around his throat, and he scrabbled at it ineffectually as he spoke, becoming increasingly hoarse. “He’s… just… he’s just a boy…”

Arthur stood, poised, the sword Freya had given him unsheathed, waiting for an opportunity to do something useful, while the thing – Sigan – that had imprisoned Mordred in his own body held Merlin in some sort of an obscene parody of a Star-Wars death grip. It didn’t help that it was cackling insanely in a high-pitched tone. The sound of it made Arthur feel sick. It was Mordred’s voice but it wasn’t, at the same time, which just made the whole situation worse.

He had to do something.

“Put him down!” he yelled, striding forward, and holding his sword out in front of him. Blindly, he sliced through the wavering bands of dark green energy that pulsed and coursed from Mordred’s – Sigan’s – fingers like vast currents of evil. The sword jarred and bounced back at first, but as he hacked he felt something give under the pressure, and he severed a single strand with a cry of triumph.

It seemed that was the only distraction Merlin needed. As Sigan’s focus slipped towards Arthur for a moment, he must have let his grip relax. By the time Sigan turned back, Merlin was surrounded by a luminous golden nimbus. Try as he might, Sigan’s dark fire could not penetrate it.

Arthur felt like punching the air. But his triumph was all too short-lived, for Sigan renewed his onslaught with an enraged shriek, and soon the two men were engaged in a deathly magical wrestling match, green and gold light flickering around them with a burning intensity that made Arthur squint. Frustrated, Arthur stood with his blade poised, but could not see how to break the dark green strands without severing the bright, golden ones.

So mesmerised was Arthur by this display that he didn’t notice until it was almost too late that a strange sort of slithering, scraping movement was growing louder all the time.

But Merlin’s head whipped round, and his eyes blazed bright as the sun. “Arthur!” Merlin cried, his voice strengthening despite the death-grip that held him. “Look out!” He flung out a ball of golden light from the centre of his aura, and it hovered over Arthur’s head like a sentinel.

A curious noise from behind Arthur echoed Merlin’s warning. He whirled on his feet. none too soon, for behind him a figure loomed, a monstrous amorphous blob, vast and threatening.

He didn’t have time to register that the lettering on his sword was glowing, the same shade of gold as Merlin’s eyes. He reacted without thought, instead, driving his sword into the heart of the strange thing that threatened to engulf him. The unearthly scraping sound that it emitted as it yielded to him set his teeth on edge. He resisted it, pushing with all his might until only Excalibur’s hilt protruded. The monster let out a great sigh and stopped moving.

Gasps and grunts filled the sudden deafening silence; sounds of Merlin’s ongoing struggle with Sigan.

Arthur withdrew his sword with some effort, and the odd figure resolved into the familiar outline of a Henry Moore sculpture he had seen a thousand times before at Kenwood House.

But he could hear a distant whispering and scratching, and that’s when he realised that there were more coming.  

“He has awoken the sculptures! They are rising,” shouted Arthur. “Merlin! You have to deal with Sigan! I will take on the sculptures.”

A strange calm settled over him. He knew, now, what to do. He felt as if his life had been leading up to this moment, and somehow, deep down, he had a sudden, clear understanding that no-one else could wield this sword like him.

“I was born to do this,” he whispered to himself, his jaw set as he stood, sword poised to protect his warlock until the enemy was defeated.  

*

Arthur had lost count of the number of nymphs, dryads and gargoyles he’d countered. His sword arm felt numb and jarred from thrusting deep into rock, and his legs and back were on fire.

But still he held strong, because he could see that as he tired, so did Sigan. Ancient and powerful he might be, but he had chosen the body of a young boy, and Mordred’s ability to physically sustain him was beginning to fade.

“I know you’re still in there, Mordred,” cried Merlin, his voice still calm. “I can see your aura! I will release you, don’t worry! Hang in there!”

Sigan laughed. “The boy is mine,” he said. “Give in, Merlin! Join with me! Together we would be invincible!”

“How do you know my name?”

“Your power drew me to it, like a magnet to a lodestone,” cried Sigan. “The stars cry out your name. Come, Merlin! Join with me! Together, think what we can achieve! We could restore the balance of nature! We could impose world peace! That’s what you want, isn’t it? We could reverse climate change!”

A gleam of something in Merlin’s eye made Arthur draw in his breath for a moment, suddenly terrified that the soft-hearted idiot might be tempted by Sigan’s mealy-mouthed words.

“No!” yelled Arthur. “He’s lying! Don’t listen to him, Merlin!”

Merlin seemed to straighten at the sound of his voice. “No! I know what you are, Sigan!” said Merlin, firmly. “You are selfish and petty. You have possessed a small child’s body. You take without asking. You return nothing. I could never join one such as you!”

But that flicker of uncertainty had somehow been enough to for a blanket of dark green to overwhelm Merlin’s defences, and as Arthur watched, panting, his sword hand slack, blackness engulfed the golden, shimmering shield that surrounded him. Shouting something, Merlin thrust out a hand, and, tugging, he ripped the amulet from Mordred’s throat. A vile, inky cloud emerged from Mordred’s mouth, and swirled round Merlin like a shroud, hiding him from Arthur’s view.

“ _Time may change me, but I can’t trace time_ ,” Merlin screamed.

A distant, proud part of Arthur noted that Merlin managed to get the lyrics right when it mattered. As he peered into the murk, a dark shape materialised out of the fog, resolving into the ghostly figure of a vast cat, enormous and feral, fangs bared. The cat sank her fangs into the blackness that emanated from Mordred’s mouth, severing the connection, and drawing its remnants into her mouth, shrinking as she sucked, until, when the last wisp had gone, she was once again diminished, a tiny kitten, washing her paws demurely.

When Arthur saw Mordred’s body slump to the ground, free but limp like a deflated balloon, a white-hot ball of anger coalesced in his chest. Sigan would pay for this.

But there was no time to react. Hearing a sudden sound behind him, Arthur turned to confront a deadly-looking statue of a knight on horseback, who was charging towards him, lance lowered. Arthur waited for the last possible second before stepping to the side, out of the reach of its flailing hoofs, and thrusting his sword, hard, into the cold stone of the horse’s bare back. The screeching whinny that it emitted made him shiver as it fell. Planting both feet on its side, he tugged with all his might to release the sword, ignoring the protest from his screaming muscles. The statue fell with a great crash, shattering as it hit the ground, forcing Arthur to dive to avoid the shrapnel.

Arthur turned, chest heaving, to see how Merlin fared with Sigan.

He blinked, disbelieving.

There, before him, stood two Merlins, locked at arms length in a deadly battle. The amulet lay on the ground, arcane light from the jewel spilling over them in dark waves. Each man’s arms were outstretched towards the other, in an uncanny reflection. Streams of power parried and thrust, and they panted, sweat streaming down their foreheads, from heat or exhaustion, Arthur did not know which.

“Kill him,” yelled one of the Merlins. “He has taken my image. Quickly, Arthur!” He sent a vicious jab of gold cascading over the other man’s body, but it hit an invisible boundary and skittered off to the side.

“No!” countered the other. “He’s lying! That’s Sigan, Arthur, it’s a trick! He’s trying to fool you into killing me! Arthur, think! Think what only I would do!” He countered with a fireball that exploded harmlessly against the edge of the other man’s shield and dissipated.

“He lies!” cried the first Merlin. “He’s Sigan! I’m Merlin! Kill him, quickly!”

“No! I’m the real Merlin!” The other Merlin sounded exhausted, but that could just be part of the illusion. “Arthur, you have to choose, quickly! The outcome hangs on a knife’s edge… You need to work out which one of us is real! Think, Arthur!”

Frustrated, Arthur looked from one man to the other. He had his suspicions which one was real, but what if he was wrong? How could he make sure that he saved the right Merlin? Which one was an evil, ancient being from God-knows where, and which was a soft-hearted idiot who couldn’t even remember David Bowie lyrics properly?

Of course!

That was it!

Arthur grinned, all uncertainty gone. “Merlin? But _I thought you died, a long, long time ago_!” He spoke in Bowie’s voice, hoping that the real Merlin would get the message.

“What? Yes,” said the first Merlin. “Yes, I did, and then I was reborn.”

For a split second, Arthur thought he’d failed, that he’d chosen a Bowie track that was too obscure. But then the other Merlin’s face split in a triumphant smirk that was the twin of Arthur’s.

“ _Oh no_ ,” the real Merlin sang, to the tune of “The man who sold the world”. “ _Not me! I never lost the trolls_!”

“ _Lost control_ , you idiot!” Even as Arthur spoke he swore he could feel his heart swelled to twice its normal size in a great upwelling of affection and relief. “It’s _I never lost control_! Not a troll in sight!”

He sprang forward, thrusting his trusty sword through the centre of the other, fake Merlin’s defensive aura, and plunging it into his heart.

The fake Merlin screamed, then, a blood-curdling howl that spoke of loss and grief and failure and thwarted ambition. Arthur looked on in horror as his body seemed to dissolve, shriveling and darkening to ephemeral wisps of jet. The other Merlin, the real Merlin, the one who had exhorted him to _think_ , stood over the nebulous tendrils of Sigan’s soul with arms stretched out before him. His clever hands seemed to bundle them into a tight ball and push them down, down, until the whole cloud was being sucked back into the heart-shaped jewel in Mordred’s amulet. As the final thread was sucked in with a hollow sound, the amulet shuddered and dimmed.

And then the night fell silent, as the two of them stood staring at one another.

“We must destroy the jewel, for it is accursed.” said Arthur, and his own voice sounded strange to his own ears, with a cast of authority to it that he did not understand.

“His soul should have been laid to rest centuries ago,” replied Merlin, with an air of wisdom that seemed to Arthur to have come from nowhere, and yet to fit him somehow.

“Then let us return to him the oblivion that he deserves,” said Arthur, and again, he didn’t know where the judgment rose from, but it seemed somehow right. Clasping the hilt of his sword with both hands, he rested its tip upon the amulet where it lay, and closed his eyes. A second later, another pair of hands closed around his, and a flood of warmth cascaded through him, and into the sword, as if he was merely a vessel for some great power, a conduit, which surged and then faded, leaving him feeling cold and empty.  When he opened his eyes, a smear of glass lay upon the ground. The ragged, molten remnants of the amulet steamed gently, still cooling in the now-clear night air.

Merlins hands were still warm around his, and the golden glow in his eyes faded until all Arthur could see was the way that they glistened, reflecting some distant light source.

“He has gone.” Merlin said. “And look! The fog is lifting!”

All around them lights were twinkling, as if the city was waking up. On the horizon a whole stretch of street lights flickered and winked into life. And nearer at hand, there was a small sound, a sharp childish intake of breath, that lifted Arthur’s heart and made him release his grip on the sword, so that it clattered, unremembered to the floor.

“Mordred!” Arthur exclaimed, running across to where the sound came from. “Where are you?”

“Uncle Arthur?” Mordred’s voice was shaky, as well it might be, but it had lost the note of dry mustiness, and returned to his usual piping treble. “Merlin? Why’s it all dark? Where’s mummy? Where’s my jool?”

Together they rushed over to where the voice was coming from.

“Are you okay?” said Arthur.

“Everything all right?” asked Merlin, at the same time.

“My bum’s all cold and I can’t find my jool,” said Mordred, his voice wavering a bit. “I don’t like it out here in the dark. It’s all spooky.”

“Hey,” said Merlin, his voice gentle. “You can have my head torch. Here!” There was a rustling and fumbling noise, and then a bright light pierced the gloom.

“Why was I all asleep on the floor?”

“You went missing, Mordred,” said Arthur. By tacit agreement he and Merlin did not mention how or why Mordred had vanished. “We came to find you, and here you were, thank God!.” It was all Arthur could do to stop his voice from shaking. He tried to pitch it low as he added, “do you feel all right? Do you remember what happened?”

He bundled Mordred into his arms, reluctantly releasing him after a moment or two and rubbing his shoulders in what he deemed to be an acceptable concerned-uncle kind of way, whilst trying to peer into his face for signs of trauma. This last was made rather difficult by the bright glare of the head torch.

“M’ cold. We was at home one minute, and then I felt weird, and then I was here on the floor, all cold. Can I have soup?” Puffs of pale breath lit up in the glow, making a narrow path of light in the beam of the torch. “Look! It’s like a light saber!” He exhaled vigorously a few times to make it happen more. “Look, Uncle Arthur! I can make light sabers with my breath.” He waggled his head and blew.

“Mordred!” Relief flooded over Arthur, making him tremble. It looked like Mordred was back to his normal, seven-year-old self, seemingly none the worse for his ordeal.

“Well we’d better get you home,” said Merlin. “Your mum has been ever so worried. Here, put my coat on over yours.”

“S’ not a coat, it’s a wizard’s cloak, Merlin. My legs feel all wobbly.”

“I’ll give you a piggy back,” said Arthur. “No kicking, though!” he added, sternly.

There was a small movement by his side, such as would be made by a small person punching the air in triumph and then doing a little victory dance.

“Yes! Piggyback!” hissed Mordred. “Result!”

Arthur chuckled, and knelt down, but before Mordred could clamber up onto his shoulders, Merlin let out an exclamation. “Wait! Arthur! Your sword!”

He had forgotten it.

“Right,” said Arthur, firmly, stooping to retrieve the sword and return it to its sheath. “And let me call Morgana to tell her we’ve got Mordred, before she razes the neighbourhood looking for him.”

“Uncle Arthur?” came a solemn voice out of the dark

“Mmm?”

“Thank you for finding me. You’re my favourite uncle, really.”

If Arthur’s chuckle sounded a bit breathless, it must have been from the exertion of carrying a robustly-built seven year old, and it definitely wasn’t a sob. “Even if I had ten nephews, Mordred,” Arthur said, his voice cracking only a little bit, “you’d still be my favourite.”

Arthur paid no attention to the faint sound at his side, which sounded suspiciously like Merlin whispering “aww!” in the manner of a sentimental idiot, and tried, but failed, to ignore the way an echoing warmth spread through his chest.

He reached for his phone and dialled.  


	7. Heroes

Arthur was still on the phone to Morgana when Merlin felt something soft butt against his ankle. He bent to retrieve a tiny black kitten, who mewled and struggled, hissing, clearling wanting to be put down.

“All right, all right,” he said, setting her down carefully. “I get the message.”

She trotted off for a few spaces, then turned and stopped, looking at them over her shoulder.

“Arthur!” said Merlin, realisation dawning. “I think she wants us to follow.”

"What again?" Arthur finished his telephone call. “We have to go straight back,” he said, striding over to them. “Morgana will kill us otherwise. Besides which, there are police everywhere.”

While he spoke, Merlin realised that the street lights had come back on all over the city, and the blaring sounds of police sirens resounded through the Heath. Far-away, flashing-blue lights winked and sped along streets. The fog was lifting, and the lines of sight were extending, now, along and across to the suburbs, and upwards towards the moon, which emerged, blinking, like a great, silver eye, and bathed the Heath in pale, clear light

As the fog lifted and Merlin looked round about, there was a curious scene of devastation around him, as if a thief of garden statuary and other ornaments had decided to dump truck loads of them all over Parliament Hill, in various states of brokenness.  

“Arthur? What…”

Arthur coughed. “Yes. Well. Someone had to protect you, while you were… They were coming at me thick and fast. I didn’t have a lot of choice, I’m afraid.” He sounded terribly apologetic as he worried at the remains of a priceless Barbara Hepworth sculpture with the toe of his boot.

“Protecting me…?”

“And Mordred, of course!”

Merlin had been so busy fighting off Sigan’s attack that he hadn’t realised just how many of these gargoyles and monuments Arthur had fought off. Affection blossomed behind Merlin’s breastbone and radiated out to the tips of his fingers and toes. “Thank you,” he whispered. “You didn’t have to do that. Thank you.”

Arthur stared back at him, the moon and stars reflected in the pool of his eyes.

“It was worth it, you know,” he said. His voice sounded different, somehow, soft-edged and vulnerable, and Merlin realised that it had lost the characteristic edge of sarcasm. “For both of you. I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Swallowing, Merlin reached out to grasp Arthur’s warm arm, and squeezed it, gently.

Arthur he looked like he was about to say something else, but then Merlin heard the mewling of the tiny cat, Mordred asked where the cat had gone, and the moment was lost.

*

As luck would have it, the cat vanished round about the location of the Ladies’ Bathing Pond, which lay drenched in moonlight, silvered fingers of willow and reeds at its fringe. Mordred clambered down off Arthur’s shoulders for a moment, allowing him to flex his complaining muscles.

“Why do you suppose…” Merlin began, but Arthur silenced him with a hand to his mouth.

The mingled scent of sweat and leather evoked the earlier battle scene and awakened in Merlin distant memories that made him shiver, of a war fought long ago.

“Shut up, Merlin,” said Arthur without heat.

Merlin’s magic flared up in ecstasy at the familiar words. Memories deluged him. Their sudden surge overwhelmed Merlin for a moment and he felt his knees weaken. His tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of his mouth.

Arthur withdrew the sword, Excalibur, from its scabbard. Runes played along its length in a dizzying display of magic that made Mordred chortle in delight.

“Uncle Arthur! You have got a magic sword! Uncle Arthur, what does it say?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur, his voice sounding frustrated. “It’s changed, and I can’t read it.”

Merlin finally found his voice. “Cast me away,” he croaked. “It says, cast me away.” He could not tear his eyes away from Arthur, who stood ramrod-straight, so regal was his bearing, so noble was his jawline. Merlin felt like he was on the edge of a cliff. One step in the wrong direction now, and all would be lost. He tried to speak again but could not. His heart hammered so hard in his rib cage that he thought it might explode.

“Of course!” Arthur turned to him and grinned, his uneven teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “It has fulfilled its destiny.”

He turned to the pond, and without hesitation, drew his arm back and flung it, so that it curved, end over end, a flashing line of silver arcing into the centre of the pool.

But what made them all gasp was the fact that the water cleaved, before the sword could splash into it, and a distant hand emerged, the water sloughing away from it in expanding circles, as if startled. The hand caught the hilt of the sword, which flickered a final time, and then abruptly descended so that all remained were the trembling waves on the surface of the pond.

They waited for a minute until the pond fell still once more.

Then, shrugging, they walked, one of Mordred’s hands in Arthur’s, the other, hot and clammy, in Merlin’s.

“Uncle Arthur?” said Mordred, in a matter-of-fact voice, “the cat lady says thank you.”

Feeling a strange chill settle in his bones, Merlin stopped walking and said. “I didn’t hear her say that. Are you sure?”

“She said it in my head,” said Mordred. _You can hear it when I talk in your head, too, can’t you, Merlin?_

Finding that he could, and not liking it one bit, Merlin sought Mordred’s aura. Sure enough, in among the bright red and blue was a hint of dark, olive green that seemed to jar and shimmer in his second sight.

He sighed, and fell to his knees so that Mordred’s face was level with his. Suddenly, Freya’s words to him earlier made perfect, awful sense. He felt a sudden pang of loss; having found this marvellous, magical ability of his, he would have to relinquish it. There was one who needed it more.

With shaking fingers, he removed the brooch that had been pinned to his cloak, and gently clasped it to Mordred’s Luke Skywalker costume.

“Mordred,” he whispered, feeling his eyes ghost over with tears, but knowing that this was the right thing to do, that Mordred needed protecting from the demons that threatened him, inside and out. “I’m sorry you lost your jewel. Maybe this one can help you to feel less bad about it. It’s really magic. If you feel lost, or frightened, it can help you.”

As he let go of the jewel, with a quiet intake of breath that was half sob, it was as if a pall descended on the world, restoring it to its original neutral tones. A dark, iron lock cut him adrift from his powers once again. A part of him cried out at the terrible loss, screaming at him to grab it back, it was his, he needed it, he had to have it!

But Merlin resisted. And when Mordred’s eyes lifted to him, he still felt a lingering sense of Mordred’s aura, still bright red and blue, but the faint dark-green wrongness had faded and been replaced by a diamond white certainty.

Mordred smiled, a pure, dazzling, innocent smile of breathtaking sweetness, and his soul spoke.

 _Thank you, Emrys,_ he said, placing a gentle hand on Merlin’s head.

The iron lock on his heart broke open with a clang. His magic was still there, had been there all along. But it felt different, it felt warm and personal and intimate, not celestial and terrifying and god-like as it had been with the jewel at his breast.  

Merlin rose, exchanging a glance with Arthur that was laced with longing and hope.

They resumed their walk, and Mordred skipped and sang between them.

“ _Under the moo-light_ ,” he sang. “ _The serious moo-light_!”

“Moonlight, Mordred,” said Arthur, mock-fierce as always in his defence of his beloved Bowie. “Dear God! Can no-one get Bowie right around here?”

*

Arthur knew something important had happened, up there, by the pool, knew by Merlin’s haunted features that he’d lost something, and gained something, and one day he would get the truth of it out of him.

Morgana was, if anything, more inconsolable now than she had been when Mordred went missing.

“Mordred! Oh, my naughty sausage, you gave me such a fright.” They barely had a chance to cross the threshold. Mordred clung to Morgana with all four limbs, and did not protest at being whisked away, yawning, into the kitchen and plied with soup, blankets and a barrage of scolds and kisses. When an apron-clad Leon gave him a large chocolate muffin to dip into his hot chocolate, he declared Leon to be his new favourite uncle, and Arthur accused him of being fickle.

Merlin was strangely silent through all this, and hovered on the periphery of the room. Arthur wanted to pull him in, to make it clear that he was part of the family, too, but then he realised that Merlin’s forehead was drawn together and his cheeks were pinched. He looked as if something was troubling him.

Somehow Arthur knew that Merlin had done something, something huge, to protect Mordred from future harm, and there was something else, a kind of worry playing about Merlin’s features that he could not fathom.

He wasn’t given to great displays of emotion, but when he thought no-one was looking, because Morgana was too busy trying to persuade Mordred to go to bed, he drew Merlin’s hand to his and tugged him back out into the hallway, cradling it, staring into Merlin’s face, drawing a gentle thumb down the faint lines that had appeared between Merlin’s eyes, cradling Merlin’s cheek in his hand for a second, then letting go and stepping back.

Frustrated, he raked his fingers through his hair, searching for words, while Merlin’s lips lifted in a mischievous grin.

“Erm.” Smooth, Arthur, smooth. He huffed a bit. “There’s something I wanted to say, Merlin.”

“I’m all ears.”

Arthur opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t say that!” added Merlin, hastily.

“Say what?”

“The quip about the ears. I’ve heard it all before.”

“I don’t want to _insult_ you, Merlin,” said Arthur, indignant, because Merlin was such an idiot, fancy thinking he was going to say something about Merlin’s ears, well, all right, so it had crossed his mind, but still! “What I wanted to say, before I was so rudely interrupted, is thank you. For saving Mordred, for protecting Morgana, and, well, I don’t know what you did with that jewel, but you look sad, and I’m sorry about that. That’s what I. Well. Wanted. To say. Just so you know. Cabbagehead.” He let out a huge sigh.

Merlin’s eyes had misted over again, in that rather endearing soft-hearted idiot sort of way that he had, and the admiring cast to his lop-sided smile was definitely not a figment of Arthur’s imagination, was it?

Leaning forward until their lips almost touched, Merlin breathed “I’d do it again,” hot puffs of his breath gusting against Arthur’s mouth, making him shiver. “Truly. For you, Arthur. _We could be heroes for ever and ever. What do you say?_ ”  

“ _We can beat them for ever and ever_ ,” said Arthur. Abruptly, he closed the final distance between them and fitted their mouths together, gasping at the heat of their touch. “I’m not a patient man, Merlin,” he murmured, pressing warm, firm kisses to Merlin’s neck and chin, gratified at the faint moan this action elicited. “Tell me now if you want me to stop.”

“Don’t!” gasped Merlin, returning the kiss with gratifying fervour. “Don’t stop, I mean! Don’t stop!”

So Arthur didn’t. Instead, he whirled Merlin round and crowded him against the wall, so that his head fell back with a thud, obligingly exposing his throat, which Arthur laved with his tongue. He worked his way down it, open-mouthed, and back along Merlin’s cheekbones towards his mouth.

“Knew which one was you,” he whispered, the firm, warm line of Merlin’s torso like magic under his fingers. “Up there on the hill, I mean. I was never in any doubt. I knew a soft-hearted idiot like you,” a wonderful, golden, generous soul like you, “would never scream at me to kill. You told me to think. I knew it, then.”

“Yeah?” said Merlin, tremulous and shaking.

Arthur liked the way that what he was doing with his hands and his mouth made Merlin’s voice tremble. It made heat bloom deep in his gut, a fierce feeling of need that stole through his veins and urged him to seek more contact, more warmth, more _Merlin_.

“Yeah,” he said, and his voice sounded hoarse and jarring in his own ears. “The Bowie thing. It was all a front.”

Merlin’s long fingers wound through his hair, pulling him in to deepen the kiss, lips moist and succulent.

Arthur questioning those plush lips with his tongue. They parted in answer, and he tumbled in with a rush, a surge of blood and fire and all-consuming desire, the glory and heat of tongue against tongue, still savoury and tasting of hot chocolate and Heinz Creme of Tomato Soup.

Arthur had a bone-deep knowledge of Merlin that went beyond mere words. His hands explored Merlin’s body, its firm shapes and angles and soft dips and dimples, and he knew them, with a simplicity and intensity that terrified and elated him. He knew the bold flash of Merlin’s eyes, the determined set of his jaw, the sly pull of his tongue and fingers, and they knew him in return.

“Come with me,” he said softly, directing Merlin with his hands and his thighs, directing him up the stairs, over the tumbled heaps of fragmented lego, into the spare bedroom, onto the mattress.

“Anywhere,” Merlin replied, his wrecked expression confirming his need as much as the tell-tale bulge below his waistband.

When Arthur slotted the bumps and dips of his body against Merlin’s, the urgency of his frantically rubbing hips matched  by the pace of Merlin’s speeding breathing, he was struck by how, if he just canted his hips, so, their two bodies fit together as if carved from a single mould.

*

Morgana didn’t even notice that the brooch pinned to Mordred’s costume glowed a deep pink as if it was blushing.

Deep below their feet, a final tentacle twitched and then fell still, forever.

And hundreds of metres away, the surface of the Ladies Bathing Pond at Hampstead Heath shimmered as if breathing a sigh of relief.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. I do not own these characters, and do not seek any financial gain from writing about them.
> 
> Quick note about "our" Boris...
> 
> Boris Johnson is London’s flamboyant mayor. Arthur’s costume is all his fault. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2141546/Boris-Johnson-Newly-elected-London-mayor-goes-run-satin-dragon-shorts.html
> 
> Chapter titles, in case you haven’t guessed, are all David Bowie songs, most of which are referenced somewhere in the text with varying degrees of accuracy.


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